Morrison nodded, picked up his pen and tapped the desk again. ‘So where did you get the money to pay Miss Curtis? Five hundred pounds, right?’
‘Oh, right, yes, he gave me that before I left.’
‘So, what else was in the carrier bag? Did you look through it?’
‘No, I did not. I was still scared shitless, excuse me, but I wanted to get back to Southampton.’
‘No credit cards, driving licence, no kind of identification?’
‘That’s right, and I gave Miss Curtis the money I’d promised
her later in the week after I’d hidden the bag in the dog kennel out in my backyard because by now, I knew I was going to be in big trouble about what had gone down in the shop. You know, Kurt had always been helpful, and we got on because, in the old days, I’d done a bit of boxing, not in his league, he was a middle-weight and could have been a champion, used to be known as The Panther, the way he moved like a dancer. But on his first big amateur fight before turning pro he got, not a really hard punch, but more of a winger to his jaw and he was out like a light. They found out he’d got a glass chin, so that was the end of his fight career. With his looks, I think he did some modelling, but I also knew not to question him on all the money he flashed around, ’cause he could turn on you and get very nasty.’ He paused as if thinking something over. ‘I suppose that was what happened to the bloke in the carpet.’
Laura had been waiting for Jack in the incident room for half an hour, but he was still in DCI Clarke’s office. Why had Jack been looking at that case file? Had he also recognised Adam Border? She recalled how the case had finally been closed, when Ridley had discovered vital CCTV footage from Ireland. She couldn’t remember Jack’s part in it, but she was certain Adam Border remained on the wanted lists.
Jack eventually exited DCI Clarke’s office, but before Laura could talk to him, DI Armani appeared and instructed Laura and Jack to attend a possible murder enquiry. They were assigned different cars, frustrating her even more.
Collingwood was eager to find out how much O’Reilly knew about the gallery’s connection to art fraud. Once Morrison had finished with his questions, Collingwood asked O’Reilly about the deliveries he had made recently. He put the CCTV photo of the man with the baseball cap on the desk in front of him. O’Reilly started to look nervous.
‘I never made any personal deliveries to anyone. The crates were delivered to me with instructions about shipping them on.’ He paused, then leaned forwards pointing at the photo. ‘Him, that bloke, he was a regular, but I had a delivery to him, it was a huge painting with a gold frame.’
‘You claimed not to know him,’ Collingwood said.
‘I don’t. He came in and collected what was delivered to the shop for him and left. That was the only time I had to take a frame to him.’
‘Do you know his address?’
‘Yeah, I do, not the exact one, it was an old comprehensive school near Westbourne Grove. I unloaded it, but I wasn’t gonna help carry it in there for him, ’cause it weighed a ton and I’ve got lower back problems.’
Morrison nodded to Collingwood to organise someone to go and check out the school. He was not that interested, wanting to move the interview on to the night at the gallery. O’Reilly soon admitted he’d been there.
‘I’d run out of money. I didn’t even know there was an exhibition going on, I just wanted to ask Kurt for the money he promised. I was trying to get Ester Langton to talk to Kurt when some bloke attacked me. He looked a bit familiar but I don’t know who he was. When the police arrived, I legged it. I couldn’t think where else to go so I went and hid at the Rent-a-Van company. Frank Jones didn’t know nothing about it.
Collingwood came back in with a photograph of the now demolished school on his mobile. He held it out to O’Reilly. ‘Yeah, it looks like the place I delivered the painting to, but it hadn’t been demolished then.’
‘So, you say this man, the one in the baseball cap, was at the school. Was he waiting for the delivery?’ Collingwood asked.
‘Yeah, didn’t tip me when I got it out either.’
‘But you don’t know his name?’
‘No, like I keep sayin’, he was just a regular customer.’
Morrison had had enough of this line of questioning. ‘How well did you know Detmar Steinburg?’
‘Listen, I never met him, and I never had any dealings with him. I knew he owned galleries and was as rich as Croesus and that Kurt was his boyfriend. I knew they were perverts, you know, they liked young boys, but I just kept my nose out of their business. Like I said, I got paid well.’
Collingwood sat back, folding his arms. ‘If I was to suggest to you that your shop was dealing in fake paintings and shipping them out to Europe and the States for considerable sums of money, and that you had to have been fully aware of this illegal transaction for some time, what would you say?’
O’Reilly shook his head several times. ‘Listen to me, if I’d known there was another fucking business going on right under my fucking nose and making other people a lot of cash, I’d have been pissed off. I don’t know anything about any fake paintings, I was just a gofer, a small-time fuckwit that got caught up in that bastard’s sick murder.’
Collingwood noticed O’Reilly looking furtively down at his feet. He got up and went round the table. ‘Stand up,’ he told him. O’Reilly was wearing a pair of expensive-looking designer suede shoes.
‘They were the only things my size,’ he said plaintively.
O’Reilly was standing in the dead man’s shoes.
Morrison was tired out and wanted to get something to eat, so he went to the canteen. Collingwood took the opportunity to head up to the office used for viewing CCTV and mobile footage. Two officers, including Ralph, were still working as Collingwood walked in.
‘We’ve checked O’Reilly’s mobile phone record and verified that he did receive a call from a mobile phone belonging to Kurt Neilson at one forty-five on Friday the 14th...’
Collingwood nodded. ‘Good work. If you guys need a break, take one now. I’ll stay here with Ralph.’
He didn’t have to ask twice; everyone was tired from being glued to the monitors all morning. They hurried out as Collingwood took over one of their chairs. Ralph waited until the door closed behind them and then leaned in close.
‘About bloody time. I’ve been fending off queries all fucking day.’
‘Yeah, well, we had Norman O’Reilly in. So what’s getting your knickers in such a twist?’
‘It’s no joke, Mike... this is all footage recorded on people’s phones at the gallery.’ Ralph plugged the hard drive into a desktop computer. Collingwood leaned back in his chair as one of the screens on a bank of six lit up, with the date and time stamp. After a few moments, Collingwood sat up, his back rigid as he watched footage of Jack Warr moving down the staircase at the gallery, exiting the glass lift, moving up the staircase and trying to herd people to move downstairs.
‘Shit,’ he said softly.
‘You’ve not seen the best yet... this is from the gallery on floor three, and we’ve got four other sections from different people.’
The footage showed Kurt Neilson pulling the cover off one of his paintings, then the footage cut to Jack Warr tackling him to the ground as a gun spun away across the floor.
Collingwood sat back, feeling sick to his stomach. ‘OK, leave it with me until I’ve had time to talk to Morrison. Don’t mention it to anyone else.’
‘It’s dynamite, isn’t it? I mean, what the hell was he doing there dressed up in his monkey suit? But I have to say he was bloody controlling the mayhem.’
‘You do nothing until I tell you,’ Collingwood snapped, eager now to get out and warn Jack what was coming. He pushed his chair back as Ralph turned to him.